Tigers Don't Do Water
by Shane C
Summary: Jake and Marco go on an unexpected, secret mission. The objective? Fun. Tom, Jake's dad, and Marco's dad are all included. Even though it's a one-shot, I would still love to hear some thoughts in a review. Please? Thanks, enjoy!


**Author's Note: **I got the idea for this one before I could find the motivation to finish Rachel's ficlet, Time to Dance. Sue me. To avoid confusion, I'm posting this one on the main page until I feel like finishing Rachel's…then I'll probably add it to the collection. As always, _please _be decent and leave a review, whether you enjoyed it or not. Reviews are the only payment a fanfic writer gets for their time…and for the time we put in, I don't think a 10-word review is too much to ask. Do you? LOL…sounds like kind of a jerk move to ignore the review button when I put it that way, huh? :P Enjoy!

**Tigers Don't Do Water**

"Jake! Jake!"

I groggily realized someone was hissing my name and jiggling my ankle. "Huh?" I groaned as I lifted my head off of my pillow and peered into the darkness – it was my dad. I could see the moonlight filtering through my window and glinting off of his eyeglasses. "Dad? What the heck?" I glanced at my bedside alarm clock – 4:40. AM. As I realized there was absolutely nothing good that would make my dad wake me up this early on a Tuesday, my body flooded itself with adrenaline. I sat bolt-upright in bed. "Dad, what's going on?" I asked in a suddenly-wide-awake voice.

"Keep it down," he whispered. "Secret mission."

I wondered if this were some sort of weird waking dream. "Secret mission?" I repeated, helpless. "Dad, you really have to tell me-"

"Nope," he cut me off. I could hear the grave, good humor in his voice, and I relaxed about a hair. "Put on some board shorts and a jacket and meet me at the car. Five minutes. We'll get breakfast on the way."

I rolled out of bed with a grunt and started searching my floor for my board shorts. "On the way to what?" I demanded quietly. Now that I knew there wasn't a Yeerk equivalent of a Nazi death squad at my door, I was working my way from being amped to annoyed. My dad didn't answer me, just left the room quietly.

I finally found my shorts; they weren't my favorite pair, they were the pair with the big flowers that Rachel had given me for my last birthday, but they would work. I pulled them on and hunted down my windbreaker, threw it on, and tried to sneak down the hall to the stairs as quietly as I could. I smiled as I realized my dad had played me good – curiosity was the one thing that could override my early-morning crankiness.

I almost ran into Tom downstairs in the kitchen – he seemed to be half-awake, at best. "Where the hell are we going?" he demanded of me, and I grinned and shrugged. Misery loves company, especially when it's your big brother's misery; the fact that Tom was just as clueless as me (_and_ cranky about it) brightened my spirits. Don't ask me why, I guess it's just a natural reaction.

Due to the fact he was still half-asleep, I was able to beat Tom to take shotgun in the Volvo. He didn't even protest, just pulled himself into the backseat where he stretched out and appeared to go back to sleep. My dad was sitting behind the wheel with an excited expression on his face. He was wearing a brand-new foul weather jacket made by Gore Tex; he looked like he was ready to go face down a hurricane with Jim Cantore, that crazy Weather Channel guy. As he pulled out of the driveway and drove through the sleeping neighborhood, I asked, "So, are you going to give us a hint? Or is it your plan to torture us until we get there?"

He laughed. I hadn't seen my dad in this good of a mood in…well, a long time. It surprised me, how fast that man's happiness infected me. I found myself not even caring about the answer to my question as he said, "I think I'll torture you a bit more. This is pretty fun." He reached behind him and started swatting Tom in the backseat without looking. "Tom, wake up! Where do you want breakfast?"

Tom sat up and shot my dad a deadly look, but said, "Fast food?" My dad is a doctor, and he's kind of a health Nazi when it comes to fast food. My dad just kept smiling and shrugged, so Tom ventured, "McDonald's?"

My dad just looked at me. "McDonald's sound good?"

I stared back blankly. I started to consider the possibility that my dad had somehow been drugged, or replaced by an extremely good-natured Yeerk. "I thought you said McDonald's was the devil?"

Over Tom's muttered, "Shut _up!_" my dad said, "It is. But sometimes you gotta give in to the devil, just a little bit. I'm really feeling a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit – how about you?" I just nodded.

"Yeah. Sounds good." I kept my voice level, but something was definitely up. Something was off. But it was different in a good way…so good, I found myself waiting for the other shoe to fall. The feeling was insistent, but was fading fast. By the time we went through the drive-thru and got our food, I was about to burst over our destination. I guess it was getting to Tom, too; through a mouthful of biscuit, he said, "Daa, oo gah gib uh hii."

I translated. "He said you have to give us a hint, dad. I agree." My dad just laughed and pointed as we pulled off of the highway; I saw the glassy charcoal of pre-dawn water and hundreds of boats docked along the shore. Guys ran all over the place, trying to get their boats set for departure. As my dad parked, I finally got it. "We're going fishing?" I asked.

"Not just fishing," my dad said proudly. "Blue water fishing. We're going out for the whole day. I feel the need to slay a five hundred pounder."

"No way!" Tom exclaimed. I shot him a sideways look, and he looked excited. I knew it was the Yeerk in control; I knew the Yeerk had read Tom's thoughts, saw that he would be excited, and was expressing the appropriate reaction. I chose to ignore it – maybe there was some way that the real Tom could get some enjoyment out of the day.

As we walked down the dock toward the big boats with folded-up outriggers, I spotted a couple of familiar figures. "Is that Marco and his dad?" I asked, surprised.

My dad just kept on smiling – if he kept it up much longer, his face was going to get stuck like that. "It was actually Peter's idea," he admitted, talking about Marco's dad. "We saw a commercial during the World Series last month, and he thought it would be a good idea to take you boys out of school one day for some bonding. I agreed, and here we are."

Marco somehow managed to look both groggy and excited at the same time. "So. You two got roped into this too, huh?"

I grinned. "You know you're just as stoked as we are." We shook hands as the captain introduced himself and his two deckhands, and we climbed aboard the monstrous, luxurious boat. The dads stayed on the stern as the captain took the boat through the harbor; Marco, Tom and I went into the cabin to explore. Tom promptly found the bunks in the bow of the cabin and went to sleep, leaving Marco and I in the ship's living room.

I know it sounds weird – a living room on a boat - but that's exactly what it was. Satellite TV, couches, fully-stocked galley complete with minibar…the place was a floating hotel suite. Marco lounged across the couch and grabbed the remote control, flipping on the TV. "Now _this _is fishing," he said, smug and happy.

My dad poked his head into the cabin. "Come on, boys, time to get to work." He disappeared again.

"We haven't even left the harbor, yet," Marco complained, but he got up and followed me out onto the deck. The deckhands were rigging up some fishing poles with long strands of shiny lures. "I thought we were blue water fishing!" Marco complained.

The deckhands laughed, and one of them handed him a pole. "We gotta catch the bait, dude," he said. "Just dip the lures in the water, let them trail beside the boat for a minute, and pull it up."

Marco looked at him dubiously, like he was putting him on, but did as the guy said. When he pulled it out of the water, several six-inch long fish flopped at the end of the lures. "No way! Fishing is _easy_!" Marco exulted, and everyone on deck laughed. I shot a glance at the dads, and both of them wore the same expression – complete satisfaction. The deckhands started pulling the bait fish off of Marco's line as I dipped mine in the water. I waited until the tug of the trailing line got heavier, and pulled it out of the water.

I quickly counted them. "I got nine. How many did you get?" I asked Marco innocently, even though I knew he'd only caught five.

"Oh, so close. I had ten," he lied, and I laughed as we rounded the pylons marking the beginning of the channel out to sea.

"Would you look at that?" my dad breathed. The sky had been rapidly lightening the whole time we'd been on the boat; now, all of a sudden, the top sliver of the sun came up over the water and set the clouds on fire. Everybody on deck stopped what they were doing for a few seconds to admire the sunrise. I know it sounds corny, but whenever the world showed me something like that, it was kind of like a reminder of what we Animorphs were fighting for.

The deckhands were securing everything for the trip out to the fishing grounds. Marco went back into the cabin to watch TV, I guess. I was more interested in learning how everything on the boat worked. I'm sure I annoyed the deckhands with all of my questions about the outriggers, what kind of bait we'd use for different fish, those kinds of things. My dad seemed pleased that I was taking an interest, and listened to the answers to the questions he'd have been too self-conscious to ask the deckhands himself. I guess the captain saw me down there aggravating his deckhands, because he got on the intercom and called me up to the wheelhouse. It felt suspiciously like I was getting called to the principal's office as I climbed the steel ladder to the enclosed wheelhouse from which the captain was controlling the boat.

I remembered old movies I'd seen about boats and captains and stuff, so I cracked the door to the wheelhouse and said, "Permission to come aboard?"

The captain laughed heartily. "You're already on board, son, you don't have to do that." I guess I hit his funnybone, because it took him a minute to stop laughing. When he finally did, he gave me a salty old smile. "What's your name again?"

"Jake, sir."

"Sir," he mused. "I like that. I don't think either of those punks down on deck have ever called me that – want a job?" I looked at him, uncertain, and he laughed again. "I'm just messing with you, Jake. I saw you down there checking everything out, and I thought you might like a look at the things that really make this monster go." He showed me how the radar and the sonar worked, then started going into the GPS system. "Fishing is safer than it's ever been, thanks to this baby," he patted his GPS lovingly. "Unless the Soviets knock the satellites out of the sky, somebody will always know where to find us." I didn't tell him that if the satellites were destroyed, it wouldn't be Russians that did it.

After thanking the captain for the lesson, I climbed down to the deck again. My dad and Marco's dad had already cracked their first beers, even though it couldn't have been seven in the morning. My dad grinned at me. "So, the captain tell you to leave his deckhands alone?"

"Nah. He just wanted to show me how the boat works – you know, GPS, radar, sonar, depth finders, radio…stuff like that."

The dads looked at me with something I could only interpret as jealousy. "Lucky," Marco's dad muttered, even though he worked on programming electrical systems like the ones I'd just seen for a living. I shrugged and entered the cabin.

The first thing I saw was Marco in the galley. He looked completely busted as he hid his hands beneath the counter, and I couldn't help a laugh. "Are you kidding? What are you hiding?"

He looked around as if his dad might be hiding in the plastic plant in the corner. "Shut up. I'm making a drink." He held up a glass with ice and a small bit of clear liquid at the bottom, then quickly added orange juice. I looked at him disapprovingly, and he bucked. "Don't look at me like that. My dad – and yours – are already drinking…why can't I try one?"

I smacked my forehead and gave him the obvious answer. "Uh, maybe because you're six years short of the legal drinking age?"

Marco just grinned. "If we're not there already, we're almost to international waters. No laws." I didn't know if that was true or not, but I sure didn't have the evidence to argue with him, and he knew it. His grin grew wider. "You want one?"

"No. And I'm not lying for you if you get caught, either," I gave him fair warning. He took a sip, coughed, grimaced, and then forced a smile.

"Yum," he made himself say.

"You could just admit that it's horrible and dump it out," I said conversationally as I flipped through the 900 satellite channels. "No harm, no foul."

He seemed to consider it, then sat down beside me on the couch. "Nope. I made my bed - now I have to get drunk in it." I shook my head again. Through the side viewports, I could see the water growing a deeper and deeper blue.

"Wow, we're really going out there," I said. I couldn't help but to think about how far away from the others we'd be in case something went wrong. "Nothing but super-deep water for miles and miles."

Marco looked amused. "Yeah. I guess tigers don't do water, huh?"

"Ha ha. And ha. Real funny."

"What the hell are you guys talking about? Tigers?" Tom asked as he made his way up the stairs from the bunks.

"Uh..no. Tiger _sharks_," Marco quickly improvised. "I heard the tiger sharks will eat your fish right off of the line out here."

Tom shrugged and went out on deck. I gave Marco a sideways look. "Now, you _know _to be more careful than that when Tom's around, right?"

Marco took another swig out of his glass. "Yeah. Think I'm drunk," he said, and I laughed. I didn't know exactly how much booze it took to get drunk, but it was more than the ounce of whatever liquor Marco had mixed into his orange juice.

The captain's voice came over the intercom. "All right, boys, we're coming up on the Tuna Grounds, now. Get the ballyhoo out."

Marco drained his glass and headed for the deck. "What the hell is the ballyhoo?" he wondered out loud.

"That's the bait we caught, you dunce," I told him as we went on deck. The deckhands were setting up poles and threading trolling lines through the outriggers at a frantic pace. "What do we need to do, dad?" I asked.

"Sit back and wait. When we hook one, somebody will take the rod and reel him in. Who's first?"

"Me!" Tom, Marco and I said simultaneously, and the dad's laughed. One of the deckhands looked down at us from his perch on top of the outrigger. "That's the captain's call," he said, but I caught the wink he tossed at my dad. I figured they'd already decided which of us would go first, to avoid exactly this kind of argument.

We didn't have to wait long. A high-pitched _Zzzzzzz! _came from our right, and one of the poles in the rod holder almost bent over double. The intercom crackled, and the captain's voice came over the boat. "Fish on! Jake, get to the fighting chair!"

I scrambled to do what he said. Once I was seated, the deckhand strapped me into the chair, then strapped the big, heavy rod between my legs. He coached me on when to pull up on the rod, when to reel, and when to rest. Marco and even Tom cheered me on. Of course, it was all half-sarcasms like, "Jeez, Jake, get him, you wuss!" and "Maybe he'll get the fish on the boat sometime today, so we can give it a try."

"Don't listen to 'em," the deckhand told me after about a half an hour of fighting the fish. My muscles were screaming, and I didn't feel any closer to getting the fish on board. My dad put my sunglasses on my face for me and mopped my forehead like a surgeon's assistant. The deckhand continued. "This fish is a beast – we haven't caught one this size in months."

"How do you know? Can you see him?" I huffed as I tried to reel in more line.

The deckhand laughed. "No, man, but the way he's fighting tells me he's at least 200 pounds. He's a monster."

The fish took me to my limits, and after another fifteen minutes, I didn't see how I was ever going to catch him. Even Tom had stopped jabbing at me and was giving me genuine encouragement. "You got this, Jake, you're the man. Get that bastard up here. Let's go, Jake-boy." I thought about the fact that an alien slug was using my brother to cheer me on, and I found reserves of anger-strength that I didn't even know I possessed.

After what seemed like forever, the younger deckhand, Jace, left my side. I saw him grab an enormous gaff and scramble to meet his partner at the stern. "All right, Jake, one more big pull, then hold him steady!" Jace called to me. I summoned all of my strength for one last pull and leaned back. I couldn't hold back a primal, I'm-at-the-end-of-my-rope yell. "Arrrrgh!" I saw two gaffs flash into the water, and an absolute _giant _of a tuna was pulled onto the deck through the door in the stern.

"Whoa!" my dad yelled, exultant. "Way to _go, _Jake!" I leaned back, totally spent, as everybody on board slapped my lightly sunburned shoulders and congratulated me. The fish was bleeding profusely all over the deck, and I randomly thought, '_Boy, am I glad Cassie's not here._' Jace tied a rope around its tail and hooked it to some sort of crane-thing; the device hoisted it up off of the ground, and he read a digital readout. "The rest of you boys have your work cut out for you – 239!" he announced. "That's a boat record for a Yellowfin this year!"

Marco handed me a bottle of water as I unstrapped myself from the fighting chair. I drank the whole thing in one go – I don't think I'd ever been so worn out from anything in my life. But there was a strong sense of accomplishment as I watched the boys throw the fish in a below-deck ice hold. "That's going on the living room wall," my dad bragged.

"Not after I catch one twice that size," Tom said aggressively as the deckhands reset the lines. I stumbled into the cabin, and the conditioned air rejuvenated me to some degree. I watched as Marco boldly went to the galley and made himself another drink.

"You're gonna get caught," I warned.

He laughed at me. "Already did. My dad doesn't care – 'man time,' he called it. He said it's cool as long as I don't get wasted. I'm sure your dad wouldn't mind you having one after _that_ performance. I don't think he stopped bragging about you the whole time you were pulling that tuna in."

That made me feel good. Even if it was for something stupid like catching a fish, I liked the fact that my dad had something to brag about. I had already had to drop my dreams of being a sports star for the cause – these days, my dad barely saw me, let alone had anything to brag on me about.

I was feeling good. High, you know? The endorphins probably clouded my judgment, which is why I said, "You know what? I _will _have a drink. Make me one." He looked at me uncertainly, but started making it. I popped my head out onto the deck. Fearlessly (again, probably a product of the natural endorphin high,) I said, "Hey, dad. I'm going to have a drink. Like, an adult drink. Is that cool?"

My dad looked surprised – I'd definitely caught him off-guard. He looked at Marco's dad, who grinned sheepishly. "You might as well let him, Steve; Marco's probably halfway to drunk by now." A slow smile spread over my dad's face, and he reached into the cooler and tossed me a beer.

"You've earned it," he said, still smiling. "But if you tell your mother, I'll disown you." I laughed and thanked him, and disappeared back into the cabin with my prize.

Marco was staring at me with disapproval plain on his face. "If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times – it's easier to get forgiveness than permission."

"And that's the difference between you and me," I said as I cracked the cold beer open and took a sip. I resisted the urge to spit it out. "This is…absolutely awful," I croaked. "I'm not drinking this." I went to throw it away, but before I could, Marco took it out of my hand and replaced it with the drink he made. I tried it, and all I could really taste was OJ with a slight bite of an aftertaste. It washed away the horrible taste of the beer. "Not bad at all," I said, and took another, less-tentative sip. Marco grinned and took out half of the beer in one go.

He smiled pleasantly and said, "Wow, you're right. This _is _bad." He then chugged the other half and tried (unsuccessfully) to smash the empty can on his forehead. "Ow," he said conversationally, and threw it away.

"Fish on!" came the cry from the deck, and Marco and I scrambled out on the deck to see what was going on. Tom had been waiting; as soon as the call went up, he was strapping himself into the chair. I followed the line to where it cut into the water, and all of a sudden, there was an explosion in the ocean as some sort of giant sailfish breached about ten feet straight into the air. I could see the drops of water falling from his massive body, glinting like diamonds in the sun; I could see the pink lure tucked neatly in the corner of his mouth.

"That is no tuna!" Marco yelled unnecessarily.

"Blue, it's a blue!" Jace called up to the captain excitedly. "A _big _one!" He turned to us, excited. "We thought the marlins were mostly fished out of here. And that one's at least a 400 pounder!"

I groaned as I realized that Tom was about to take bragging rights for the trip. Jace winked at me. "Don't worry. I hope he gets him, but it's a 50/50 shot at best that he gets him on the boat without any help." Marco and I climbed to the fly bridge to watch the action; I soon realized that, unless you were the one actually catching the fish, it was pretty boring. The marlin leapt out of the water twice more, trying to shake the hook, but then seemed content to pull the line away from Tom as hard and as deep as he could go. I finished my drink, and Marco unsteadily climbed down the ladder to get us refills. When he returned, I took the first sip off of the fresh drink and sat back.

I could feel the alcohol going to work on me, and I thought I understood my dad's excitement a little better now. I felt light, bubbly, happy. I felt totally unrestrained, and for the first time since meeting Elfangor, I completely and totally relaxed and allowed myself to have fun. "Get him, Tom! Go!" I yelled, smiling. Marco held up his plastic cup, and I touched my drink to his and took a swig. "Thanks, man. Good call on the drinks."

"I _do _feel a little better now that our dads know. This wouldn't be half as much fun if we had to sweek – I mean, sneak." I laughed as the alcohol tied his tongue a little.

I looked down at my brother, whose biceps were bulging at the strain the fish was putting on him. It sounds weird – sick, even – but I was happy for him, the real Tom. He was somewhere inside of himself, telling that Yeerk to reel that god damn fish in, to _never _quit on it, because _he'd _never quit on something like this. I imagined the future, long after the war, when I could sit down with him and say, "Remember that time we went fishing? I knew you were a controller – I also knew you were the one in charge, reeling in that marlin. I knew you were the one telling the Yeerk not to give up, because _you'd _never give up, and he had to keep his cover. I could imagine you, satisfied, telling the Yeerk he picked the wrong host if he'd wanted one that would roll over when things got tough." I smiled at the thought.

I looked at my dad and Marco's dad. The two of them, leaning against the side of the boat, drinking beer and egging Tom on, could not have looked any happier if someone handed them each a pot of gold. I found myself grateful to whoever was out there that would let people I cared about have this sort of happiness in such a dark time, whether they knew it or not.

I looked over at my best friend. He was slightly drunk, but he looked happy, too. He catcalled Tom without mercy, but every so often he'd slip in some genuine encouragement. Even though Tom was _my _brother, Marco cared about the guy, too. He'd grown up with us, and Tom had never treated him any different than me. While most people would have considered that a bad thing, Marco saw it as unbridled acceptance, and that acceptance made him feel like I did about Tom. Made him want to free him just as much as I did. The word 'family' stuck in my head as Marco laughed and yelled, and it made me think of the other Animorphs. Rachel really _was _family. Cassie…well, I didn't often have the time to think about our future, but I thought that one day, I'd like to officially make her a part of my family. Tobias? After what he'd sacrificed for the human race in general and us Animorphs in particular, how could I _not _consider him family? And Ax – he had no one but us. And I realized that even though he was an alien, I considered him a brother of sorts.

Marco caught me staring at him, I guess. "What?" he asked uncomfortably, and squirmed a little bit. "You're creeping me out."

I laughed. "Nothing. It's just…I don't know. I feel weird. Happy, you know?"

He laughed too. "Jake, having fun? Where is the video camera? The others are _never _gonna believe this without proof."

I smiled and looked out across the sparkling ocean, and as I did, Tom's marlin broke the air-water barrier once again. "I guess tigers do water, after all," I said quietly with a laugh.

"What was that?" Marco was looking at me like I was losing it; he actually had his hand extended, like he was about to take my drink away.

I laughed and took another sip. "Nothing, man. Nothing at all."


End file.
